


Tides on Skin

by shotboxer



Category: Shetland (TV)
Genre: Co-Parenting, Complicated Relationships, Other, Shadows on Skin, Writing on Skin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:01:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21795772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shotboxer/pseuds/shotboxer
Summary: Duncan has trained himself not to see, but he still watches the shadows.
Relationships: Alison McIntosh & Duncan Hunter, Duncan Hunter & Jimmy Perez
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Tides on Skin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Addison R (beyond_belief)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beyond_belief/gifts).



> For AddisonR: Happy Yuletide!
> 
> Many thanks to El for a great beta. Any remaining errors are entirely mine.

The thing about Jimmy, Duncan thinks as he makes his way down the steps toward the sound of laughter, is that everyone knows there’s more going on under the surface. He’s got moods like the waters around Shetland, predictable as the tides, except for the spots that are a mess of twisting currents and tugging undertows. A storm blows in and Jimmy becomes a port where other ships can anchor, and DI Perez the waves crashing against the rocks. Duncan had thought he’d never face DI Perez, and then he’d found himself in a cell with Jimmy stood in front of him, skin washed clean and pale and the awareness of their daughter and his son heavy in the space between them.

People think Duncan’s a charmer, that he hasn’t met a deal or a woman he couldn’t sweet talk. It’s true, too. He enjoys the play, the ebb and flow of negotiation. He’s been seduced time and again by the rhythms of a shared life, staying contained for a night or a decade in their own little domestic tide pool. Sometimes Duncan feels like he’s still a shallow pool, always on the brink of losing too much of his precious water to the relentless sun, forever tucked away in a forgotten part of the rocky shore, unnoticed by passersby in search of marine treasure, and too far removed to rejoin the sea that would welcome his carefully nurtured gifts home. Then he looks at Jimmy and knows it could be worse. Jimmy’s depths wash over his skin, flowing this way and that as others jostle by, never joining in.

He’d worried the first few times he’d met the new boyfriend after he and Fran had split. The man’s face and body turned toward Fran like a sail into the wind, and Duncan couldn’t see closely enough to resolve the heavy stain on his pale Shetlandic arms into something that told him either _love_ or _obsession_.

The boyfriend became the fiancé and Fran called and Duncan flew to Glasgow. He arrived at the house before time and Fran opened the door to him, smiling. A smile that would once have warmed his cheeks with inextinguishable happiness now stiffened his spine. Duncan wondered bitterly when he had started to find it suspicious when his daughter’s mother found pleasure in his company.

A high-pitched shriek sounded behind Fran, and Duncan’s eyes found Cassie through the glass door at the other end of the sitting room. His baby was giggling, a gap-toothed grin shining across her face, and the fiancé was beside her. Laughter creased the man’s face in unschooled ease and ancient script limned the crinkles at the corners of his eyes. Jimmy’s forearms were bare and Duncan could see the wisps on his skin dapple and dissolve, curling open toward the little girl he was scooping up into his arms. As Jimmy came toward them, the shadowy traces settled along the edges where skin touched to cradle the small body safe. Duncan traced every wisp he could make out and watched Fran’s new man watch their child.

When Fran and Jimmy ask him, careful and solemn, if he’ll allow the new husband to claim his daughter, Duncan nods and chokes on his agreement in haste to secure this man to his baby’s side. A week later he signs on the line that makes Hunter into Perez, and Jimmy takes his hand for the first time, soft shadows enveloping Duncan’s gaudy splotches, words of gratitude less solid in his ear than the firm grip that lingers as a ghost along his knuckles even before Cassie’s dad withdraws.

They see each other once or twice a year, when the Perez family comes up to Shetland to see Jimmy’s parents out on Fair Isle, or Fran drags Cassie along to a gallery opening in Lerwick where her newest works will be displayed. Duncan watches his daughter, the dance of her skin unchanging, light and gay and so full of the freshness of childhood, the immediacy of want and disappointment, tantrums and fits of giggles. Fran responds to each twist of mood with flitting, darting shadows that change on her skin the way the canvas transforms under her paintbrush. Stroke by stroke, Fran’s moods are even more changeable than her daughter’s, although her age and responsibility hide it well. Duncan averts his eyes and feigns a lack of sight; the knowledge that was commonplace to him is now a stolen intimacy that ought to be meant for Jimmy alone.

Jimmy is calmer, steadier, the rock both Fran and Cassie lean on. Duncan watches the ink surge over Jimmy’s skin, giving the lie to his placid demeanour and giving depth to the person.

Duncan learns not to look. He’s caught staring too many times, pinned by Jimmy’s gaze, flat and appraising in an implacable way that tells Duncan he’ll be a detective before it ever happens. He pretends he can’t see and teaches himself to look away. Fran gets sick and Duncan doesn’t react to the curling up of Cassie’s swirls, to the throb of misery drops mottling Jimmy from nape to collarbone. Fran’s ink fades and he looks at her least of all. At the funeral, when he tries, Duncan cannot remember what Fran’s skin looks like except pale and thin in death. He was good at stilling the shadows before. He’s an expert by the time the last shovel of dirt is tamped down. Jimmy and Cassie move to Shetland, the surf wild and their skin calm and pale.

When Cassie tosses her book to the floor and throws vicious words in his face, he snaps back at her, sharp as she is, angry that he can send her to her room, angry that Jimmy isn’t there to do it for him, angry that, as the door slams hard enough to rattle the wall, he doesn’t know how to make his daughter’s skin dance again.

When Jimmy returns from signing the final papers at the bank, Duncan is ready for him. Jimmy sits and Duncan makes coffee and they talk and agree to terms. Duncan says he’ll follow Jimmy’s lead. Jimmy insists that Duncan needs to be her father too. Duncan looks down and sees the grey tinge to James Perez’s skin and reaches across to lay his hand over it. Maybe if he presses down the ink will come back together and return to its proper depth.

Cassie pouts and shouts when they present her with a united front, frustrated tears soon soaked up by her Dad’s jumper. Duncan pours a shot of whiskey into each of their coffee mugs and waits until Cassie is in bed to tell Jimmy how he and Fran met.

Duncan meets Mary and they do not talk about Fran again. Fran would have handled things, kept Jimmy from becoming wan and solemn and Cassie from petty rebellions. But Fran isn’t here to do anything for anyone anymore. Duncan does his clumsy best for them both instead. He bumbles it more than half the time, and forgets to consider if he should be doing something at least a third of the rest, and still there comes a day when Jimmy trusts Duncan enough to lean on. It’s only the once, when Mary is out of town and Cassie is away in Marbella being dutifully chaperoned by teachers who had seemed old when Duncan and Jimmy had been at school.

Duncan remembers Jimmy’s voice breaking in the rhythm of the tides of grief. He can recall the cling of tear-soaked cotton to his chest, and the weight of another man’s body pressing him down into the couch, and the throb of helplessness behind his dry eyes. When he runs his mind back over that afternoon on the couch, he cannot picture Jimmy’s skin at all.

Cassie gets older. The tides of life settle. Duncan has her every other weekend. He and Jimmy talk often, sometimes every day. Cassie still manages to use Duncan against her Dad, and Duncan watches her skin and tells himself he has to do a better job. She ignores him like she never has Jimmy. Duncan looks at his own unchanging skin when he hugs his daughter hello, and thinks he was never cut out to be a father. His arms go black and white at the thought.

“Duncan?” Cassie’s head is ducked and her voice wavers. His daughter has never been uncertain.

“Nothing, love. How was your week?”

Cassie looks at him, eyes sliding from his face to the side, down. Her disenchantment is familiar and deserved. She shrugs and rolls her eyes at him. “Oh, well, you know Tosh - that’s the new DS that’s come up from Glasgow to work for Dad - came into school to give us all a talk about stealing.”

“Oh, I remember that one. Don’t leave your stuff lying about. Taking stuff that isn’t yours is wrong, even if it’s on a dare.”

“It was brilliant, Duncan! She actually answered the questions. I thought the head teacher was going to have a stroke when she told Jerry Truesdale that he’d be better off keeping any stuff he wanted private at home, since teachers were more than likely to go through it than his parents.”

“I don’t imagine Jimmy thought much of that.”

“He does have a sense of humor, you know.”

“Aye, and you’re a perfect angel.”

“Well, if you wouldn’t side with Dad all the time when he’s being unreasonable.”

“Unreasonable? Really, Cassie?”

“You know me and Maureen have been talking about going to the Edinburgh Festival forever.”

“I know that you have to pay the adult rate if you fly anywhere alone.” Cassie glares and folds her arms. The curlicues on her skin tighten inward. “You’ve got a good while to plan and save up. By this time next year, you’ll be rolling in dough.”

“Not with the pocket money Dad gives me.”

Duncan glances away. He doesn’t need to look to see his skin shift. “Alright, we’ll work something out, you and me.” Cassie’s skin unfurls as he caves, as he knows it will. “You can earn some extra cash by giving your Dad a break. He worries too much. You shouldn’t be giving him more to fret about.”

Fran’s daughter twirls into Duncan’s arms and kisses his cheek. “You’re the best, Duncan.”

Detective Sergeant McIntosh - “Just call her Tosh, Duncan, everyone does” - arrives on his doorstep with Cassie in tow, a week after she’s awed the whole of Lerwick’s teenage population. She’s there to introduce herself, and to leave broad hints about certain conversations that it’s a good idea for teenage girls to have with their parents, even if those parents are ageing men who are generally condemned by the population of Lerwick as unredeemable philanderers.

Duncan offers her tea as Cassie flushes in mortification, made all the funnier by the frantic jiggling shadows showing from under the cuffs of her shirt, and flees to her bedroom. Tosh makes a face at her back. “I don’t miss that age, let me tell you. Sugar and milk, please.”

Duncan sets a spoon down next to the sugar bowl and finds himself staring at the new DS’s hands. Her skin is inked just the same as everyone, but there’s no movement. If he couldn’t see the shivery edge of each line, Duncan would think this woman was carrying a body full of souvenirs of a seriously misspent youth - and no soul. Tosh picks up the spoon and shrugs and grimaces in the exaggerated way of old vaudeville films. “It’s never moved. Or so I’m told.”

She pauses, obviously considering him. Cassie comes back in, carrying a mug and plate Duncan suspects have been in her room for over a week, and looks them both over. She sets her dishes in the sink and turns around with folded arms. “Tosh, Duncan can see stuff on people’s skin. Duncan, Tosh can open stuff up. Get over it.” She grabs an apple from the basket by the kettle and marches out again.

Duncan and Tosh stare at each other. Tosh lifts her coffee up and nods emphatically. “She gets that from her Dad.”

Duncan laughs. “She definitely didn’t get it from me. I’m much more subtle.” He files away the information that Jimmy’s new colleague can tell when other people have talents.

After that awkward conversation with Jimmy in his kitchen, about something at work that’s thrown Jimmy off his admittedly halting stride with Asha, Duncan catches Tosh down by the shops. He comes over to say hello and can’t get words out. Alison’s skin is moving. She follows his gaze down to her hands and turns her head away.

Duncan steps back and nods down the road. “I’ve been thinking of opening a bistro. What do you think of my chances?”

She takes her time in answering. Duncan waits and watches the gulls fight over scraps. He hears her swallow. “You should get a new lock for the shed in your back garden. The one you’ve got is easy to pick and there’s always someone who’s looking for a private place to...” her voice trails off.

“DS McIntosh, are you telling me that there have been teenagers using my shed for romantic liaisons?” Duncan’s proud he gets as close to his normal bantering tone as he does.

“I’m telling you that they will do if you don’t change those locks.”

Duncan makes a face at the very idea, and she laughs. It’s rumbly and genuine and she needs a drink of water to fight off the hiccup at the end. “Heaven forbid I have to tell Jimmy that our daughter lost her virtue beside a pile of tomato stakes.”

“Give her some credit. Cassie’s got more sense than that. She’d bring a blanket and some booze at least.”

He shouldn’t be laughing about his daughter’s speculative sex life. Duncan can’t imagine how Alison laughs at all. It’s funny though, absurd and possible and possibly true. Duncan laughs harder and steps nearer to Tosh to share the warm mirth. He keeps his eyes on her skin and the lines do not draw away. “Did Jimmy ever tell you about the time Cassie tried to get the boat out to sail it by herself, and ended up locked in the shed all night?”

“No, but you’re gonna tell me everything so I can ask Cassie about it next time we go for a drink.”

Cassie comes back from Brazil, not pregnant, too interested in booze. She’s a woman now. He and Jimmy tread a careful line, insouciant dad and unreasonable dad, and Cassie’s refusal to listen to either of them talk sense feels more personal than any of her teenage rebellions. Then everything collapses thanks to an old photo and a scarf, and Duncan is left to reconcile the man who faced him, wan and shadowless in that cell, with the one who has convinced their daughter to see him still, who keeps him in their lives.

Duncan’s sitting and worrying over it all when Cassie sits next to him on the wall. There is only silence between them, now that they’ve both said all they can think of.

“I could never see anything on his skin, you know? I mean, there was stuff there, of course, but it was like it, I don’t know. Like the way Dad’s skin looked for ages after Mum died. Except it was as if he was born that way. I thought it was just part of him, like the colour of his eyes, or, or his laugh.”

Duncan knows better than to try and wrap an arm around her. He settles for shifting closer.

He wants to ask How come you never told me, Fran never told me, you could see the shadows on skin? He leans forward, elbows on knees. “And now?”

“He’s a shallow bastard and he doesn’t deserve someone with my gorgeous and dynamic skin.”

“That he does not.”

Duncan shakes himself out of the memories and waves hello to the group lounging on Jimmy’s back patio. It’s not just him and Jimmy tonight. Tosh has come over for a drink and Cassie’s old enough now to join them now. He’s more grateful than he can say for the invitation that was offered, like things are normal, as if his past adultery is the same as Jimmy doing his job.

Duncan gets a beer for himself and settles in the one free chair. In the lull after his welcome, all four of them sit and look out to sea. Duncan can’t stop fiddling with his bottle, worrying at the label with the side of his thumb. He looks up when Tosh shifts and catches Jimmy give her an amused glance, the kind he used to give Duncan over Cassie’s head when their daughter was nattering on about something and they were pretending that they didn’t know she was working her way around to asking for permission to do something, trying to slip it in under their radar.

“You know, I can’t stop thinking about that woman we had in the cells this morning, the one who got picked up by her husband and he was drunker than she was? Did you notice she wouldn’t look at anyone’s skin? It was like she was afraid of it.”

Jimmy stops moving. Duncan stills in reaction to the rush along the knuckles wrapped around Jimmy’s glass.

Cassie sets her glass down and sighs. “Well, then she’s just stupid. There’s nothing weird or special about seeing the tides on people’s skin. Dad and Duncan can do it as well as I can.”

Duncan gapes. He stares at Jimmy, whose face is artfully dismayed. Duncan thinks Fran would have loved to capture that expression. “Intriguingly human”, she’d have called it.

Cassie leans over and takes the bottle from his hand, then reaches for Jimmy’s glass and places them both safely down on the wall behind her. “D’you remember that game we used to play with Mum when I was small? When it was storming out and I was afraid of the thunder and lightning?”

“Aye.” Jimmy won’t look at Duncan. Duncan can’t take his eyes off of Jimmy.

Cassie gets up from her chair and threads her way past Tosh to settle onto the ground and lean back against Duncan’s knees, within touching distance of her dad. “We’d lie in bed, and you’d put the duvet over those big tall chairs so it was like a tent, and if the lights had gone out, you or Mum’d get a torch and we’d cuddle and shine the light on each other’s arms and say what we thought each ink blot looked like.”

“You called them ink blots?” Duncan raises his eyebrows at Jimmy.

“’Course he didn’t. Mum called them, what was it?”

Jimmy’s voice is hoarse. “Splotchy bits. And we had to describe them really well because we could see them and she couldn’t.”

Cassie reaches back and takes Duncan’s wrist, lifts his unresisting arm off his leg, and brings it forward. His sleeves are already rolled up. “Tosh can’t see the splotchy bits.”

Tosh leans over and squints at Duncan’s arm. “You know, I tried for months after I moved here to figure out what the Inspector could see that I couldn’t, and then I kept trying to open it up when I couldn’t get anything out of him.”

“You never told me that.”

“Well, all I did was give myself a splitting headache. They got worse the more I tried. Finally Billy pulled me aside ‘cause I’d gone through all the pain pills in the medicine kit, and told me you’d tell me in your own time and I’d not impress you by making myself useless.”

“When’d you figure it out?”

Jimmy leaned toward Cassie. “How’d you know I didn’t tell her first?”

“Because you never tell anyone anything when you should, and she’s smarter than you.”

“No argument there.” Duncan shifts his chair so he’s closer to Jimmy and more of his arm is draped over Cassie.

Tosh takes up her beer and swigs it. “A good detective knows when to keep her cards close to her chest.”

Jimmy chuckles and salutes her with his own beer. Tosh moves her chair in close and leans over Cassie. “So, what’s it I’m not seeing on Duncan?”

Cassie and Jimmy cock their heads to the side, studying Duncan’s exposed skin with identical concentration. Duncan meets Tosh’s eyes. He can feel his face echoing her fond smile. Jimmy moves closer and traces the pad of his finger over Duncan’s skin, calluses catching lightly in the fine hair. “I’d say this one’s a pig.”

“A pig?!”

“With wings.”

“It’s more like a cow than a pig, Dad.”

“Is not. See, those are cloven hooves, right there.”

Duncan brings his head down to their level. “Well, I say it’s a,” he flexes his arm and concentrates, “a castle with a dragon.”

Duncan’s skin flows as he’s willed it, the skill still with him even after a decade and more of neglect. Jimmy gasps and Cassie squeals in delight. “I knew it! I told you Dad wasn’t the only one who could do it!”

As Cassie and Tosh clink bottles in triumph, Jimmy’s hand cups Duncan’s arm, shielding the dragon from view. Duncan places his own hand on top of Jimmy’s. Their eyes meet. Colour rushes into Jimmy’s face.

When they look down, the dragon is stretched lazily from one wrist to another, the smoke from its mouth eddying over and between their skin where it touches.

**Author's Note:**

> Although this fic deals with what happened to Tosh in Season 3, there is no direct mention or discussion of what occurred. Therefore, I have chosen not to warn for content.


End file.
